nuxx.net
Making, baking, and (un-)breaking things in Southeast Michigan.

The New Deal at The Blind Pig in Ann Arbor

March 20, 2005

Well, as I mentioned not a few minutes ago, and I just returned from a most wonderful show. See, Midwest Product was playing tonight, opening up for a Toronto band that neither of us had heard of, The New Deal.

Well, to make a long story short, we went, and were quickly blown away. One guy with five analog synths (Nord Lead, Juno 106, Moog something or other, Rhodes Organ, and a Korg Drawbar organ), a bassist with a boatload of effects, and a drummer with a rather interesting kit, and the only microphones on stage.

Over the course of two and a half hours they played five total ‘songs’. Well, there were only four recognizable breaks between things, including intermission and a pause for an encore.

They played an incredibly tight set, as if they’ve been playing together for years. They may have, but I’m not sure… Regardless, it was an absolutely amazing show.

Here’s some video that shot with his nifty pocket sized camera that he, unlike my forgetful ass, remembered to bring. They came out extremely well, with excellent sound:

· The New Deal – Clip 1 (Drummer – 1010 KB – MPEG-4)
· The New Deal – Clip 2 (Audience / Drummer / Keyboardist – 1.6MB – MPEG-4)
· Midwest Product (600 KB MPEG-4)

So, yeah. Definitely check those videos out, and the next time they come to town, or if you are lucky enough to be able to see them in their native Toronto, go! You won’t be disappointed… I have never seen a completely live band play together so wonderfully as these guys.

In addition, the person selling their CDs told me that the show was audience recorded (there was a guy with a laptop and stereo mic setup) and will likely end up on The Internet Archive‘s Live Music Archive. I cannot wait to get a copy of it to listen to.

Wow. Just…. Wow.

moved from livejournalmusic

Rot!

March 19, 2005

Hmm, well, there is a pot of chilled wort sitting on the counter, all covered up. Hopefully it’ll start rotting soon. I’d like to be able to brew Sunday or Monday, but it might go off a bit further than that.

I’ve actually had a similar kind of rot happen before, by filling up a mixing bowl from chocolate chip cookies with straight water and letting it sit for a while. After about a week there’d be a bit of scum with bubbles in it, and a nasty sour stink. That’s almost exactly what I’m looking for, but it’s intentional this time.

Oh, and for anyone who won’t try this because of how it’s made, know that lambics are fermented in a similar manner. You just toss all the stuff in, expose it to the air, and let it go. Completely natural…

Hmm, maybe I’ll do a raspberry lambic when summer rolls around. I’ll just let it sit outside or in front of the cracked doorwall for a while…

beerfoodmoved from livejournal

Rot!

March 18, 2005

Tonight I have to add some grains to a pot of water, then let them rot.

Literally.

I’m making up some beer that supposedly gets a bunch of it’s flavor from sour mash, and I need to make some. Yes, this is the same stuff as some whiskeys are made from. Basically, you let grain steep at a high enough temperature to mash the grains into sugar, then cover it and let it be. It’s supposed to be used once it’s so stinky you think it should be thrown out.

This should be interesting.

beerfoodmoved from livejournal

Geek Help

March 14, 2005

Help! I’m having an issue that I just can’t seem to figure out… Hopefully someone here will be able to point me in the right direction. I *think* the problem is with pipes in Windows (XP SP2 specifically) but I’m not completely sure.

Basically, I’m doing this: nc 192.168.0.1 10567 < hugefile.gz on the Windows box, and the destination has been Linux, Windows XP, and OS X, all with the same result.

Hugefile is somewhere around 22GB… What happens is that seemingly no matter where the destination is, it just stops sending after a while, usually with the output file on the target machine being 23MB-24MB. This size is not consistant. I’ve also gotten these results across a pocket-sized 100MB switch, the company’s switch to which I’m connected, etc.

I really don’t know what’s up… I think it’s Windows pipes, or some sort of buffer somewhere?

Sending from Linux to Windows works just fine, as this was how I created the image. (dd if=/dev/hda | gzip -c | nc -w 15 192.168.0.2)

Does anyone have any ideas? I’m really lost…

UPDATE: A bit more info… This is what I see on the sending side:

nc -v -v -v -w 30 130.175.142.190 10567 < createdimage.gz p-p-p-powerbook.XXXXX.XX.XXX.XXX [XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX] 10567 (?) open net timeout sent 24887296, rcvd 0: NOTSOCK

And on the target side:

nc -l -v -v -v -p 10567 > createdimage.gz
listening on [any] 10567 …
connect to [130.175.142.190] from XXXXXX-notebook.XXXXX.XX.XXX.XXX [XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX] 4244
sent 0, rcvd 24215552

So, yeah. I’m running out of ideas…

computersmoved from livejournal

Holland Ponds Park in Shelby Township, Michigan

March 9, 2005


Click for more…

On Sunday I decided to celebrate the warmish weather and go for a walk through one of my favorite, curious local parks, Holland Ponds. (Thanks to for reminding me of the proper name of this facility.) For an hour or two I wandered through the park, looking around, taking pictures of various things. For those who don’t know, this park is located right next to the G&H Landfill site, an EPA Superfund project. It’s really interesting to see how far the site has come from it’s previous use as a waste dump. While I did find some barrels ( 1 · 2 ) floating in the river – which I reported to the EPA and National Response Center (Report #752142) – this was a really nice walk and I got a much better feel for how everything is laid out there. By the time I was done, my boots and the lower half of my pants were completely saturated, but it was worth it. All the snow was melting, the sun was out, and it was almost 50°F that day.

So, if you’d like to see some pictures from the walk, give this link a click. Towards the end of the gallery there are some interesting concrete textures that I grabbed from the foundation of a barn.

moved from livejournaloutdoors

DHS/EPA?

March 8, 2005

Hmm, that’s interesting. I called the EPA about the barrels I found, they took the report, then asked me to call the National Response Center, which I believe is part of the Coast Guard and thusly DHS. Interestingly, one of the phone options was to report terrorist activity.

I’ve got a report number, and we’ll see where the barrels go from here.

moved from livejournaloutdoors

EPA?

March 8, 2005

Hmm, so I’m thinking about calling the EPA regarding barrels I found in the Clinton River along the Superfund site of G&H Landfill.

· http://www.nuxx.net/gallery/hollandponds06march2005/DSCN0385
· http://www.nuxx.net/gallery/hollandponds06march2005/DSCN0362

moved from livejournaloutdoors

TiVo!

March 1, 2005

After what turns out to have been wasting around three hours trying to make it work via Vonage, my TiVo is working. Without connecting it to a phone line.

How?

Well, it seems that on newer TiVo models, if you boot them with a supported USB network adapter attached (most all of them are supported) and you set the modem’s dialing string to ,#401 it’ll appear to be dialing the modem and such, but instead it’ll connect via ethernet.

Imagine that…

Well, the TiVo is now all set up with USB network adapter and all. Being a good geek, I didn’t properly cable it yet, because I wasn’t certain if it had worked or not. But now that it did, I’ll fix it tomorrow.

I’ve also subscribed to a season pass of Good Eats, and the episode of Frontline showing at 3:30am should be recorded. We’ll see how it goes.

Regardless, I’m satisfied. I just wish that the Ethernet-based option for setting up the Tivo would have been a bit more obvious.

I must say, it’s a pretty nifty device… There’s lots of things you can tweak, including a built-in guide for programming the remote to control your HT gear’s volume and mute, turning on and off the front LEDs (this is big to me), network settings, internal diags, log access, etc. Definitely a nice box.

…and now I sleep.

acquired thingscomputersmoved from livejournalmovies

+++ATH0

March 1, 2005

Wow, what a beautiful morning. While the drive to work wasn’t the quickest, it really was beautiful. Only an hour and fifteen minutes… I wish I was off work today so that I could plod through a park taking pictures of the snow hanging off of the trees. It’s just heavy enough to stick to absolutely everything, and the wind isn’t really blowing so the snow is tending to stick on things. (Snow!)

Also, the 40GB iPod Photo I ordered fully charged last night, so I synched it and started using it today. I must say, the display is much easier to read, especially while driving. It just looks a lot smoother, and more text can fit on the screen. The album art is also a nice perk. (Photo) Now I just need to get the old one cleaned up and ready to be sold on eBay.

Tonight I’m supposed to head over to my parents house to do some work on their computer. I also need to bring the TiVo so it can do it’s first round of guided setup which (for some unknown reason) absolutely requires an analog phone line. Yet after that you can use the device with an ethernet connection… Hopefully the snow won’t put a crimp on these plans, because I’d really like to grab the latest episode of Frontline. Tonight’s episode is called A Soldier’s Heart and addresses mental issues that soldiers can experience after battle and various other bits of military service and training.

Worst case I’ll just watch it live, but the TiVo service has been activated, so the device should be as well.

Shows like Frontline are the reason I picked up the TiVo. I almost always miss them, and while I hate scheduling my life around a television show, shows like this are really worth watching. Actually, a number of the shows on PBS restore my faith in television journalism. With all the AOLTWMSNBCBS soundbite-based crap, it’s very refreshing to see a detailed, well-documented story. And no, { Discovery Channel | History Channel | Learning Channel | Whatever } doesn’t hold a candle, because they all seem to be stuck on ‘Big Angry Shop Rats’ or yet another ‘Hitler the Drug Fiend’ or ‘Aliens: The True Story’.

Curiously this morning someone had arranged for Panera to bring in trays of bagels, and there was a espresso-based coffee cart in the cafeteria, all for free. I’m trying to eat less so I skipped the bagel, but a nice double shot of espresso was a nice change of pace from the normal work-provided crap-coffee.

acquired thingsmoved from livejournalweather